This week I had a couple chances to meet real patients in person. I accompanied the nurse on the team, Karen, to the post-op floor to meet a patient who’d just had his pituitary adenoma (a benign tumor) removed. We explained the study and read through all the consent forms. Karen was excellent at not pressuring him. She sat down next to him on the bed and joked about hospital food and teased how she didn’t have to take anything else from him right then. He was really nice about it and seemed pretty interested in the outcome of the study. He signed the form but it’s not binding at all, anyone can opt out for three years after they start the study.
We also met up with a patient who had already consented and was coming back for a clinic visit to get his sutures taken out. Karen drew a few tubes of his blood for the study and set up a time for the interview next week. She told me that generally people aren’t in any mood to have blood taken right after surgery, or right before, which is when she also often consents people. Both the patients we saw were in pretty good spirits, even though the one in the clinic had been diagnosed recently with a glioblastoma multiforme, the most malignant kind of brain tumor. Even after having it totally removed the life expectancy isn’t great. Anyway I hope to see more patients in the upcoming weeks, as it is a good reminder that all the patients we’re studying are (in many cases, were) real people who flinch when you take their blood and joke about hamburgers.
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